


A Nightmare Revisited

by Khirs



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Nightmares, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3654399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirs/pseuds/Khirs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura tries to sleep, she really does. In fact that's all she wants to do, but she keeps having the same nightmare over and over in a vicious cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Nightmare Revisited

It was dark, quiet. She was leaning against the wall looking out of the window. The stars were hidden by thick columns of smoke, and her heart clenched. She couldn’t even look at the stars now; she couldn’t do quite a few things she’d normally do. It was always just _so quiet_ now. No one stole her cookies. Her chocolate was untouched on the desk. Her yellow pillow was always just where she left it.

Sometimes, she’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking she saw a puff of smoke or a giant black cat on the floor with wide unseeing eyes. Those nights were the worst. Hope would skyrocket in her chest until she couldn’t breathe, fingernails clawing at blankets to race out of bed to the window or to check the other bed. When that hope crashed down and fractured into a thousand sharp splinters, she’d return to her bed and keep her tired eyes trained on the ceiling, waiting for any movement out of the corner of her eyes.

She couldn’t be alone. She refused to accept this as a fact. LaF and Perry would come by every once in a while. Perry always brought food, and LaF always sat next to her in her bed and watched movies. Laura was very appreciative of all of the efforts they went through to make sure she was more than just a shadow, but the guilt weighed so heavily on her she could barely crack a smile at LaF’s jokes or ask Perry about the face she made every time LaF went to the library to hang out with JP.

“Did you shower today?” Perry asked as she picked up Laura’s abandoned clothes off the floor. She shook her head. “Do you want to?”

“Maybe later,” she murmured softly, flipping through the pages of a book on the furthest thing from vampires. Her heart squeezed painfully anyway as her eyes devoured the words on the page. She closed it.

“Okay, I’m down the hall if you want anything, Laura,” Perry said gently. She gave Laura’s arm a pat and left quietly through the door, making sure to close the door as softly as possible.

Silence had returned, and she was left alone with her all consuming thoughts.

At some point, she’d slipped deeply into the river of sleep, darkness washing over her until she saw a bright, horrific light casting terrible shadows on the ruined walls around the pit. Suddenly, she was cast back into one of her darkest moments.

_The sound of fighting was like a dull background symphony. Warm blood trickled down the side of her face, and she could feel her cheek swelling with painful sporadic throbbing. Her friends were all around her battling vampires, ignoring the welling up of the light from the pit._

_“Danny,” she called. “LaF, Perry, Kirsch!”_

_She tried to push herself up to help them. Danny was drenched in gore, LaF had bruises already forming on their skin and a deep gash that cast blood into their eyes, and then there was Perry, the most surprising of them all. Her hair was wild and eyes ferocious as she fended off a vampire coming to finish a fallen LaF. Laura wanted to close her eyes as she realized what was about to happen. She found herself frozen as Perry drove the stake into yielding flesh._

_“Perry,” Laura heard LaF call before they lost consciousness._

_Laura had to get up. Her arm was burning with a pain she’d never known, but she managed to bring herself to her feet. There was a dull ache in her knee; she knew she’d have to count herself lucky if it wasn’t sprained. She hobbled over to LaF and Perry, still viciously defending her fallen comrade. Laura touched Perry’s shoulder and she crumpled to the hard ground next to LaF._

_“I’ll hold them off, take care of LaF,” Laura insisted, grabbing a weapon from a cold hand._

_The moments flashed by it seemed. One minute, she had killed a vampire, wincing as the warmth ran over her trembling fingers, and the next she was wiping her own blood out of her eyes. She glanced back and LaF was awake again, Perry wiping dirt and blood off of their face as best as she could. With a nod to Laura, both of them were back in the fight. Her ears rang with metal on metal. Another moment flashed by, long red hair in the middle of a pack of Will’s angry vampire lackeys._

_She was running, pain shooting up her leg, the metal pipe cold and unyielding in her hands. With a sharp swing, one of the vampires with their fingernails sinking into Danny’s shoulder fell face first into the hard ground._

_“Laura, are you okay?” Danny asked breathless from the fighting._

_“I’m all right,” she nodded even as she winced from the sting of the cut over her eye. “You?”_

_She nodded._

_Another flash._

_“That’s not just me,” Laura breathed, suddenly afraid. Danny looked frightened for the first time since Laura met her._

_“No, it’s…,” Danny broke off and pointed to the pit._

_The light was growing hungrier by the minute it seemed. Violence, blood, and gore only seemed to worsen the pulsating light. She felt a tug._

_She was closer to the edge of the pit, staring down into the brilliant, terrifying light. The smell was awful like rot, like decay. It wasn’t warm; it gave her a chill being so close. Her bones felt it. Her soul felt the icy clutch of the light, and her heart weakened. It would be so easy for it to be over._

_A giant black cat was tugging her back, a sword strapped to its back. Laura’s knees felt weak with relief, and as the cat shifted, her heart soared._

_“Carmilla,” she breathed, watching the other girl’s eyes warm with affection before growing apologetic. Carmilla reached for the sword on her back._

_“Laura.”_

_“Carmilla, no!” she screamed, the words harsh and tearing at her throat so viciously she almost thought she tasted blood. The vampire gave her a soft smile. “Carmilla!”_

She awoke with a jolt, heart racing, tears pouring down her face. When would the nightmares stop? She turned on her side to face the other bed. If she wished hard enough, maybe Carmilla would appear with a puff of smoke sitting casually on her bed with Laura’s yellow pillow tucked under one arm and a lazy smile stretching across her mouth.

Her knee ached, her arm hurt, and her heart broke. The healing wounds from the battle weren’t as severe as the one Carmilla’s absence had left. Laura pushed herself up, taking her pillow with her, and crawled into Carmilla’s bed. Her scent still lingered there like a memory of jasmine and lovely old things. If she closed her eyes, maybe she could pretend Carmilla was still there. Tears slipped past her closed eyelids, and she waited.

She waited like she did every night for a ghost, for an echo, for a sliver of hope.

When she fell asleep, she revisited the same nightmare again.


End file.
